


Always There

by unkissed



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Harry Potter Next Generation, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 05:01:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2256753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unkissed/pseuds/unkissed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James has marked Teddy as his prey.  If Teddy was smart, he would stay away from the Potters for a little while.  But he's an idiot and he's sex-starved and he keeps finding excuses to visit over the next year when he knows James is supposed to be home from Hogwarts.  Not that Teddy expects anything from James other than spending time with him – gods, that would be so wrong – the most wrong thing he can imagine doing, which is saying a lot, considering his modus operandi of finding inappropriate sex partners.  Because Teddy hadn’t been shagging just his university professor since he'd given into his desire for men at the ripe age of seventeen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always There

**Author's Note:**

> I must thank Ash for planting the seeds of her ideas in my head a few years ago. Thanks to Bex and Shan for helping shape James and Teddy in my mind. Gratitude also goes out to ColorfulStabwound for opening my eyes to the wonderful world of second person POV and for beta-reading.

James Sirius Potter, _the little shit_ , always seems to be there, especially when you dearly hope he’s not.  At first, you think it’s just a coincidence. But then he just keeps showing up at the most inopportune moments.

He’s there when you snog Victoire silly on platform 9 ¾, peeking out from behind a trolley stacked high with trunks, looking positively scandalized.  He’s there on the same platform that June and you could swear you see disappointment in his eyes when Vic marches straight off the Hogwarts Express towards you, smacks you across the face, calls you an arsehole and tells you that it’s over. You knew you had it coming after that letter you had written to her in May, confessing your indiscretions with a young professor at university – it had earned you nothing but silence until now. And perhaps that’s the first time James looks at you absent of that expression of hero-worshiping adoration. Definitely not one of your shining moments, and you feel like you’ve let down not just Vic, but somehow the whole damn family – the family that you’d been graciously adopted into nineteen years ago.

James is there the following year at the Weasley clan Easter gathering at The Burrow when Harry chews you out about your choice of lover.  Thankfully, Harry has just enough tact to do it away from the party, out by Molly’s garden. But you’re not stupid enough to think there’s such thing as privacy in this family.

“It’s just wrong.  On so many levels,” Harry tells you, “I mean, do you really want to be _that_ guy? A home-wrecker? You were raised better than that, Teddy.” You could shrivel up and die from the look of disappointment in Harry’s face.

James is hiding, not very well, in the bushes a good distance behind his dad, but you can see it in his eyes – the kid’s confused, angry, and scared, and maybe a bit crestfallen.  You don’t expect a thirteen-year-old to understand that you’re not really an arsehole, you’re just stupid-in-love with this man ten years your senior who makes you believe he’d leave his wife and daughter for you. He catches your worried gaze from across the garden and you wish you could explain it all to him and be his hero again.

But really, you probably ceased to be his hero a while ago and you wonder why he keeps hanging around you over the next couple of years, at every family function and when you come around to the Potter house for dinner. You’re hardly a worthy companion for this boy, the perfect apple of his parents’ eyes, the Gryffindor star Quidditch player, and probably the most popular boy at school. You can’t figure out why he’s not off with his friends or a girlfriend on those evenings after Sunday dinner at the Potters’ when even Albus makes himself scarce (and you _know_ you’ve managed to retain hero status with the younger Potter boy.)

Finally, one summer you get an inkling of exactly why James is always around.  You’re at Lily’s birthday luau.  Apparently Hawaiian muggle culture is all the rage among pre-teen witches these days. When you arrive, dressed in a silly floral-patterned shirt, James is there to greet you. He’s fifteen now. He’s wearing board shorts of a similar floral pattern, a wreath of tropical blooms around his neck, and nothing else but a knowing smirk.  You’ve seen that smirk.  You know that smirk means trouble, out of which you might have to bail him later. 

When he pads up to you, barefoot, with his signature cocky swagger, you realize that he’s grown tremendously in the few months since you’ve seen him.  He was always a tall kid, but now he’s practically full-grown, and judging from the generous amount of flesh he’s showing off, he’s filled out _a lot.  Shit._ You shouldn’t be looking at James that way, but you can’t help yourself and you swallow hard when he steps into your personal space.

“Hey, Teddy.  Wanna get _lei’d_?” he asks, drawling smoothly.

You choke on your words and your hair is probably turning pink at the tips to match the color in your cheeks. “Er, what?” you manage.

James just rolls his eyes as if you’re missing the joke entirely.  And really, you are, because this is anything but humorous.

“Of course you want to get _lei’d_. I’ve _lei’d_ everyone at this stupid party and every single one of them _loved_ it.”

You always knew James was a cheeky bastard with a smart mouth and you rather like that about the little prat. But this – _this_ is not fucking funny.  Because you should be laughing and ruffling his hair and calling him a dork, but you’re speechless.  And _gods_ you feel a little twitch in your shorts, and you’re cursing the fact that linen hides nothing.

“You, er, what?” you sputter.

“Come on, Lupin, when’s the last time you got _lei’d_ good and proper?”

You should tell him it’s none of his business, not that you’re offended by his blunt honesty – it never offended you before. And you think about how it’s been months since you had sex with anybody.  But you just stand there blinking at James incredulously.

He takes the floral Hawaiian _lei_ off his neck and places it around yours. He grins smugly and damn if the way his lips quirk at the corners isn’t doing horrible things to you right now. “There.  Now you’ve been _lei’d_. Go get yourself a drink. Mum’s mixing Mai Tais for the grown ups. Or in your case, for the juvenile delinquents who can get lit legally.”

And that’s when the enchantment breaks, when he disparages you the way only he can get away with.  You laugh as easily as you always can with James. You hook an arm around him in a playful chokehold and ruin his hair thoroughly.

As the party wears on, and it truly does wear on you given the alarming number of giggling girls cramped into a relatively small square of backyard, you keep flashing furtive glances at James. And he’s anything but subtle with the way he watches you.  He’s monopolized the little inflatable pool that was probably meant for decoration. His legs are hanging all the way out, and his arm is draped across the air-filled plastic sides. He’s so big (and wet, and goddamn fit) that every time he moves, water sloshes out of the pool.  He’s drinking a virgin (at least you bloody hope so) frozen colada, puckering his pretty lips around a color-changing straw. Your hair is changing in the same exact way, from blue to pink, as you watch him lounging with that cool, cock-sure, entitlement of his.  But it’s not the cold that’s making your hair morph involuntarily, it’s the heat flushing through your body when James peers over the top of his sunglasses at you. There’s something predatory in that stare.  And you can’t help but feel like he’s marked you as his prey.

You make up a stupid excuse to leave the party early, much to the disappointment of all the Potters.  But James doesn’t look disappointed at all. When you wave your goodbye from a safe distance, he waves back with a knowing grin.  And it’s that fucking astute smirk of his that you see behind closed eyes when you wank yourself silly that night and come spectacularly, cursing James Sirius Potter and his newly acquired skill of making you want what you can’t have.

If you were smart, and if you’d learned your damn lesson with Martine, who you left shortly after Harry had advised you, you would stay away from the Potters for a little while. But you’re an idiot and you’re sex-starved and you keep finding excuses to visit over the next year when you know James is supposed to be home from Hogwarts.  Not that you expect anything from James other than spending time with him – gods, that would be so wrong – the most wrong thing you can imagine doing, which is saying a lot, considering your _modus operandi_ of finding inappropriate sex partners. Because you hadn’t been fucking _just_ your university professor since you gave into your desire for cock at the ripe age of seventeen.

You fucked your college roommate who was engaged to his girlfriend at the time.  You fucked your roommate’s twin brother when he came to visit him at uni. And, perhaps your crowning “achievement” which earned you utter douche-bag status, you fucked your second cousin on your mother’s side and his boyfriend when they took you back to theirs for a threesome after a particularly self-destructive night at a muggle gay bar. To be fair, though, he was a relative who you’d only ever seen when you were a little kid, and as an adult (around Harry’s age), the bloke barely resembled the snotty teenager you’d met ages ago and you hadn’t recognized him. You’d accompanied your gran to Lucius Malfoy’s funeral a few weeks after that tryst when you were horrified to discover the identity of the presumed stranger you’d fucked. But the bastard _must_ have known who you were when he took you home, for there are only so many blue-haired metamorphmages in your family.

You know that having sex with James would trump that one-night-stand by leaps and bounds.  But stop.  Stop right there, Teddy Remus Lupin.  James hasn’t really given you any indication that it’s even a remote possibility.  He flirts with you hardcore every chance he gets, dropping not-so-subtle innuendos, because nothing about James is subtle. He’s always touching you - sitting close to you on the sofa when you watch the telly, rough-housing with you on the lawn, giving you lingering hugs when you leave.  But he also talks about all the girls he’s _sticking it to_ and goes into vivid detail about the hand jobs and blow jobs so many seem to be tripping over themselves to give him. You know that prat likes to push your buttons and tease, however, until recently, in the decidedly non-sexual manner. He’s just fucking with your head, Teddy; get it together.  He’s straight, if maybe a bit bi-curious, and he doesn’t really want you like that… Right?

It becomes a less remote possibility the following summer, when you graduate from university at the age of twenty-three.

James isn’t just there to see you at your worst, after all, and you want him to be there to see you at your best. You’re the youngest wizard in decades to earn a doctorate degree in Transfiguration from The Institute of Advanced Wizardry at Oxford.  You’re so happy to see Harry there, your surrogate father, clapping with too much enthusiasm when you walk across the Hall of Honours in your billowing purple robes to receive your certificate of achievement – it’s nice to see him proud of you for a change, rather than cringing at every horrible life-choice you’ve made. And you’re not surprised to see Ginny, and the three kids there as well, beaming at you with pride along with dear old gran. Yes, even James has traded his signature smarmy grin for a smile of genuine admiration.

There’s a celebration at gran’s afterwards. The usual suspects are there. Everyone is scattered about in animated conversation, as is always the case at family affairs, when James saunters up to you, butterbeer in hand, slick as ever in a slim-fit sport jacket and white dress shirt with the top three buttons undone.  You muse to yourself that James could be _your_ undoing, looking as if his surname should be _Bond,_ like the guy from those muggle films he watches.

“So, _Doctor_ Teddy Lupin, hm?” he says with an amused grin. 

“I guess,” you say with a humble shrug, but you can’t help smirking proudly.  “Though nobody in the wizarding world ever uses that title, you know?  I have a Ph.D.  I’m not a healer, or anything.”

James rolls his eyes and drawls, “Well, obviously.” He looks like he could be a fellow university classmate, but he’s sixteen, and still has all that bratty teenage attitude.  “I just like saying it. It has a nice ring to it, no? _Doctor_ Teddy Lupin, I presume,” The words roll off his tongue like liquid sex and you want to lick it all up.  He smiles before closing his lips around the rim of the bottle and you feel your trousers getting tighter as you watch him take a sip.

You somehow find your sense of decency, or the illusion thereof, to steer the conversation away from James repeating your name with the sensuality of a pornstar.  “Actually, it’s now official that you’ll be calling me _Professor_ Teddy Lupin this fall,” you tell him proudly, if a bit smugly.

“Get out!” he says excitedly with the bright eyes of a child, and when he smacks you hard on the chest with his big hand, it actually hurts a little bit.  “So you got the job, huh?  Fucking knew you would.” He puts up his hand for you to high-five, and you do so joyfully because you love that you’re possibly not an arsehole fuck-up in his eyes anymore.  Perhaps, you could even be somebody he looks up to again.

But, he’ll never look up to you again, per se, because he’s now standing eye-to-eye with you.  Damn, this boy grows like a weed!

You’re high on the gift of his approval, and on the victory of your great achievement, enough to overlook the fact that he smells faintly of alcohol, despite what the label on the glass bottle claims. You’ve got a nice buzz going on with the help of your own bottle of Ogden’s summer ale.

At the end of the night, you’re alone in gran’s kitchen, doing the rest of the washing up for her, since she goes to bed earlier and earlier these days.  Ginny and her brood are helping tidy the rest of the house.  Well, really just Ginny and Lily are tidying. Albie is softly playing a gentle tune on the old piano in the sitting room, setting a relaxed atmosphere, and you couldn’t think of a better way to end the best day of your life. James, however, is nowhere to be seen. Until he sneaks up behind you and pokes your sides.  You yelp and giggle and nearly drop the dish that you’re drying by hand - because you may be highly skilled in transfiguration, but your kitchen spells are still crap at best.

“Need a hand?” he offers.

You smile graciously over your shoulder and say, “If you wouldn’t mind.”

But instead of taking the towel off the rack to assist you with drying dishes, he puts his hands on you, where your shoulders meet your neck, and starts to massage you firmly.

“Erm…” It feels divine, and you can’t bring yourself to tell him to stop.  “Jamie?”

“What?” he says, feigning innocence, “You said I could give you a hand.  You didn’t say _how_ I could use them.”

You chuckle softly, amused at the sodding cheeky bastard.  You can’t help the pleased groan that escapes your lips, however small, when his thumbs expertly ply your muscles.

“Bet you had a really stressful term at school, yeah? Writing your thesis and stuff?” he asks. It’s so adorable when James pretends he’s interested in what you’re doing, regardless of how boring it might be to him. But there’s an undertone of something beneath the small talk.  “You feel a bit… tense.”

 _Fuck._ James might be chatting you up.

“Just a bit.  Not stressed about uni anymore, but now the real stress begins,” you admit with a sad sigh.

“Little bear in the great big world, huh? Sucks for you, Teddy – you have to be an adult now.”  _Merlin_ , when did James Sirius Potter become so wise? So astute?

Yes, you’ve been stressed out about life, about the prospect of taking on the position of Transfiguration professor at Hogwarts, about being responsible and doing what’s right.  And this?  This here, is anything but right.  But those hands, _gods_ , those gifted hands that feel so warm and firm and commanding…

 _Fuck it._ You’re allowed one more night of boyhood foolishness before you’re thrust into the adult life of career and bills and financial responsibility.  Besides, you’ve still got that beer buzz going on.

You realize that the piano has stopped. The sounds of Ginny’s and Lily’s soft chatter have stopped.  The whole world has stopped. And James’ lips are at the back of your ear, ghosting hotly against your neck, setting your whole body aflame with your hair color announcing your arousal more loudly than your cock, which begins to stir.

You can’t imagine James would dare do this unless the others had already gone home without him, although, he always _was_ fond of danger, and you don’t think they’ve said goodbye.

He whispers, “Let me help you.” And you _know_ this has ceased to be about stress or washing up or anything clean at all. His mouth closes wetly upon the skin near the juncture of your neck and shoulder, above your shirt collar.

You drop the dish you’d forgotten you’d been holding and James is quick to catch it centimeters before it hits the tile floor. James’ sharp, Quidditch-honed reflexes make you swoon like a schoolgirl.  When you turn around, he’s rising until he’s standing there, caging you in, reaching behind you to put the dish on the counter, leaning way too close for familial comfort.  He’s staring at you like he’s seeing you for the first time, with so much curiosity and wonder, but also like he’s been looking at nobody else but you for his entire life. And you melt beneath that blue-green gaze.

Before you can slip away between James and the counter to make a very prudent retreat, his mouth is on yours. He tastes of cherry wine, starlight mints, and forbidden fruit.  He kisses you like he knows what he’s doing, and you no longer doubt his tales of female conquest and precocious debauchery.  It’s wet and sloppy and reckless, just like you’d imagine a brash boy such as James would kiss – but you haven’t been imagining have you?  Come on.

You’re quite literally trapped between James and the counter.  Not that you want to go anywhere but to a more comfortable, decidedly horizontal surface upon which to snog.  But this isn’t about what _you_ want. Of course, it’s not. You don’t really want to bear all the shit that comes with kissing your sixteen-year-old sort-of-brother while his mum is in the next room. Your body, however, wants to be kissing this perfect embodiment of male beauty and masculine entitlement.  And James wants _you._ He makes it glaringly clear with the way he presses his body against yours, alerting you to the formidable tent in his trousers, and with the command with which he devours your mouth.

A little voice in the back of your head, the one who always seems to get particularly chatty when you’re about to make very bad decisions, tells you that James might not want _you_ per se, but any bloke with which to exercise his hetero-flexibility. It’ll be just one kiss. Maybe a little bit of touching. Just for tonight.

That rationale brings you to your old room after the others leave, onto the twin bed that was too small the last time you slept in it and can’t even begin to support two full-grown young men.  But, damn, you’re willing to try.  You’re on your back and James is draped over you, straddling your waist, kissing you with abandon and teenage bravado, like he’s got something to prove.  It becomes clear that the bed is no longer a suitable place for your forbidden liaison when the mattress starts to creak rhythmically under your combined weight. He’s rolling his hips and grinding down slowly on you, eliciting so much friction that you’re afraid your skivvies will catch fire.

“Stop, stop, stop,” you hiss quietly against his open mouth, grabbing his hips with more vigor than you had intended, the way you normally do when you’re willing your lover to do anything but stop.

“What’s the matter?” James drawls, “Can’t keep up with me, old man?”

You chuckle flatly.  “Fuck you, Jamie.”  It’s not really funny, but you want to stifle that horrible thought poking at your conscience – you are twenty-three-years-old and James is bloody _sixteen._   Granted, he’s a few months shy of seventeen, but _still_.  “We need to stop making so much noise, is all I’m saying.”

“Honestly, Teddy, have you never done anything but wank quietly in this room before?”

He reaches his arm over your head, grasping for the wand in his jacket that’s hanging on the headboard.  You catch a whiff beneath his arm and the musky pheromones of James’ scent seduce you into believing he’s not a child, but a man, with a man’s smell and a man’s _fit_ body and a man’s _hard_ cock. And _fuck_ if you don’t want all of him right now, sixteen be damned. He casts a silencing charm around the room and you dearly hope he’s as skilled with his wand as he is with his broom.

You both wind up naked, because _fuck it_ at this point.  You were both down to your pre-come-soaked underpants when you hit the bed anyway.  When he sits upright on top of you, gazing down with blue-green eyes behind a curtain of long, dark lashes, brandishing his cock, you learn the hard way (ha!) that James has never lied to you.  He really does have a “ _huge dick that all the girls beg for”_ like he’s bragged about before.  He’s wielding it like a weapon of mass destruction, curling his fingers around its turgid mass, sliding over it enticingly. 

And when he whispers, ragged and hot and surprisingly vulnerable with desperate need, you know he’s not lying. “I’ve wanted you for so long, Teddy.”

“Yeah?” you breathe out, ignoring the gravity of that statement in favor of relishing the way it strokes your ego, not to mention, in favor of watching James stroke his beautiful dick.

He grinds down and his sweat dampened skin slides deliciously against your pre-come-slicked cock.  “Yeah,” he moans with such predatory sensuality that you could almost shoot your load right now.

You heave a long, pained sigh. “ _Fuuuuck_ …”

“Yes, that’s my aim, Teddy.  You’re a smart one.” 

You have to giggle at the way he can make sarcasm so fucking sexy. 

But then it hits you like a brick - You shouldn’t even be kissing him, let alone having sex with him.  He meets the age of consent in England, but in the wizarding world, he’s not an adult, and that could have legal ramifications. Jail time aside, he’s practically your little brother.  His dad is the only father you’ve ever known.  You need to stop this right now, mister, before you do something you regret. Before you do something James regrets.

“Erm, no,” you say, a bit singsong to soothe the sting of rejection.

He quirks a brow sharply.  “No?”  Nobody tells James Sirius Potter _no_ and lives to tell the tale.

“No,” you say more resolutely. “No, we are absolutely not fucking.”

He rolls his eyes as he climbs off of you, heaving a petulant, annoyed sigh, and mutters, “Always knew you were boring.”

 _Ugh! That little shit! What a brat!_ This is so typical James that it hurts. He’s pulling on his boxer briefs and it’s a bit comical how much he has to stretch them to accommodate his persistent erection.

You sit up and you bite your bottom lip to keep from saying anything.  You shouldn’t protest his premature departure.  He shouldn’t stay.  This is the right way to resolve the situation.  You should just let him leave.

You can’t help but feel a pang of sympathy, for under that arrogance, you suspect James feels rejected.  You want to tell him how much you loved kissing him, feeling him, being so close and uninhibited with him.  But that won’t help him get his clothes on any faster and out your door, where he belongs.  So you sit there, anguish furrowing your brow, your cock still heavy between your legs, and you watch James leave.

It’s the last time you see him all summer. You make damn sure of that. Although, you still see him naked behind your eyelids and you still feel the ghosts of his kisses upon your skin and you still smell his lingering scent of teenage sexual vitality when you fuck your hand almost every night and come to the sound of his voice echoing in your head like an enchantment spell.

_Doctor Teddy Lupin, I presume._

 

“Professor T. R. Lupin, I presume,” says a severe-looking old witch as she greets you at Hogwarts castle, one week before the start of term.

“Teddy, er, I mean, Ted.”  You extend your hand a bit stiffly for her to shake. She looks down her nose at you, eyeing you warily over her spectacles.

“You barely look old enough to be teaching here, Mr. Lupin, I suggest you adopt a more professional demeanor if you want to command respect from the students here, starting with the way others address you.”

You pull your unshaken hand away, rather taken aback by this woman’s sharpness.  “Oh, er… okay. I mean, yes, ma’am.”

“That’s Mrs. Oglvie to you, Mr. Lupin, and Professor Oglvie to our students, and for the interim, Headmistress Oglvie until my husband recovers from surgery.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to--.”  You don’t get the chance to tell her how sorry you are to hear that Headmaster Oglvie, the jolly wizard you had interviewed with, had befallen some sort of misfortune.  But you beg the gods for his speedy recovery.

“I will be conducting your orientation in lieu of my husband. Come along.”  She turns swiftly with a flourish of green robes and you follow her through the castle, wishing that McGonagall were still alive, even though her untimely demise last year afforded you your new position. 

McGonagall had been your mentor at Hogwarts, your idol. She managed to juggle the duties of Headmistress with her beloved job of teaching Transfiguration, and it had been her zest for the subject that drew you to it.

Headmistress Oglvie manages to smite out any excitement you have about starting the term as the new Transfiguration professor. You’re so stressed out about lesson plans and schedules and performance assessments that you forget about your greatest challenge to come.

You’re suddenly reminded of what that challenge is when James Potter comes strutting like a peacock into the Great Hall on the evening of the first of September, wearing his Head Boy badge like it’s a fucking crown.  _Shit._ You have to somehow teach this kid Transfiguration while avoiding eye contact for an entire school year.

Of course, the Head Boy and Head Girl have to sit at the staff tables.  You hazard a glance towards James and he regards you with an curt, smirky nod that says, _Yeah, I see you, arsehole. I’m gonna make this year Hell for you._   When you’re introduced to the entire school during the Headmistress’ opening address, there are quite a few whistles and cat calls.  You know it’s just Albie and Lily and their gaggle of Weasley cousins welcoming you the only way they know how – by embarrassing the fuck out of you.

James assumes his new job easily and with relish, barking at his unruly family to settle down, lording over them with more authority than his Head Boy status should’ve afforded him.  By the end of dinner, he’s already given detention to Albie and his blond, conjoined counterpart.

And you have another dismaying revelation. You not only have to teach James Transfiguration, you have to teach Scorpius Malfoy for the next _two_ years. Fuck, if that won’t be a bit weird, knowing what you’ve done with that kid’s father when you were practically a kid yourself.

Your first lesson of what you hope will be a long career at Hogwarts, provided you don’t succumb to and die of Awkward this term, thankfully goes well.  The third-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs are darlings.  You can see that their eyes are bright with a thirst for knowledge and filled with wonder. 

It is in stark contrast to the Gryffindor and Slytherin 7th year Advanced class the next hour.  You curse your adopted family for setting a bad precedent at dinner, for you’re met with more whistles and cat calls when you enter the classroom. You conclude that the sorting hat places all sexually precocious, outspoken brats in Gryffindor, and you don’t put it past the Slytherin girls for looking at you like they’d suck you off in your office for good marks.  You feel like a mouse in a den of lions and snakes, all of which are vying to be the one that gets to eat you alive.

Then James, _Bloody James Potter_ , starts doling out detentions to the Slytherins like he’s Father Christmas on the twenty-fifth of December.

That date pokes you in the back of the head and makes you think of the twenty-sixth of December.  You know what’s going to happen on that day this year. That’s the day that James turns seventeen, the day he’s legally an adult in the wizarding world. Not that it matters to you. It really shouldn’t. You’ll politely wish him a happy birthday if you happen to see him, and you’ll go on your merry way of resolutely trying to avoid him.  Because, legal or not, he’s still practically your brother, and you doubt he’ll miraculously stop being an insufferable little shit when he comes of age.

The classroom settles down enough for you to get on with the lesson, but you’re not home free.  James takes it upon himself to ask questions.  Lots of questions.  And you’d commend him for his inquisitiveness, but you know he’s not all that interested in Transfiguration.  The sexy little prat starts every question the same way.

“Professor Lupin, if you would suffer me for a moment…”

He drawls the words and lets them roll off his tongue, and you can practically taste James’ mouth when the boy says your name. The way he says _Professor Lupin_ soon replaces _Doctor Lupin_ as the words you hear in your head when you jerk your cock at night. 

Damn right, you still do it.  This is a very stressful job and you need a bit of stress relief almost every night just to be able to settle your mind enough to sleep. You can’t help that the memories of naked James Potter are still wank-fodder.  You know you’re not alone in this after spending a few weeks at Hogwarts. James Potter is the boy every girl wants and every boy wants to be, and for a few of those boys, the boy they want to be inside of.  Yes, your gaydar is _that_ good, which is how you had managed to fuck all those “straight” men in the first place.

Fucking right, you’ll suffer James Potter. You’ll suffer him every Merlin-forsaken day of the damn term.  And you will count down the days until winter break, eager for a chance to breathe without James being all up in your business like the teacher’s assistant you never asked for, helping you mark first-year papers, collecting classroom materials at the end of the lesson, setting your storage room straight after it’s trashed at the end of the day, lugging your ever-present stack of parchments which you are always grading (even at meals) from the Great Hall to your office. And you know that he’s doing it, not because he’s a helpful little Head Boy, but because he knows it drives you mad to be alone with his presence and _not_ touch him.

You’re not all that disappointed when Oglvie informs you that you have to stay at Hogwarts over the winter holidays to supervise the few students who will remain.  At least it will be quiet.  But then Albie comes running up to you one day begging you to help him convince his parents to let him stay at school.  You know it’s because his blond attachment is staying.  Merlin forbid, those two dislodge for one bloody week. You help him out in the interest of fostering young, innocent love.  Because, even though it’s a secret and likely still unspoken, damn, if those two aren’t adorable together.  But you regret the accommodations you make for Albus when you show up to dinner that first night of winter break and see another Potter sitting at the table that the elves have set up.

 _Merlin’s fucking pants, kill me now,_ you lament to yourself.  You exchange rushed pleasantries with everyone at the table, grab a dinner roll from the basket, and promptly excuse yourself, feigning a heavy workload.  Today is actually the first day you don’t have much work to do. 

You’re starving by the time breakfast rolls around, and you’re the first one in the Great Hall when it’s served. You’re shoveling up your second helping of scrambled eggs when the students start pattering in. While you’re leisurely reading the Daily Prophet over your coffee, you are only mildly concerned when three out of the fifteen students haven’t shown up yet. James is conspicuously among the absentees, the other two being James’ younger brother and his other half. You suspect they’re scheming some Christmas Eve shenanigans, since today is the twenty-fourth.

You linger at the table, nursing your coffee slowly. But you’re not waiting for James to come to breakfast.  You’re not worried abut him.  Of course, you’re not. You just, er, like to take your time with breakfast.  Sure.

All the other kids have dispersed from the Great Hall when Albus and Scorpius shuffle in, bleary-eyed, with their arms linked as per usual. They plop down at the table and flash you grins that are entirely too sweet for Slytherin boys. You feel an extra sense of responsibility over the Potters and you resolve to keep a closer watch. You won’t question Albus right now because you have a sinking feeling you’d be pissing on his joy, and you don’t want to be a buzz-kill.  You’re not sure if that buzz is from smuggled-in alcohol, illicit potions, or, shudder-to-think, exploits in their beds.  Albie isn’t a baby any more.  He’s fifteen. And it makes your heart ache that you need to start worrying about the kid in ways you had hoped you wouldn’t have to until he is older.

You’re still full of eggs, so you skip lunch, and you don’t see James until tonight, when you enter the Great Hall for dinner and find that it’s decorated with a proper Christmas tree, icicles glittering on the walls, and snow falling from the enchanted ceiling.  It’s a bit much for such a small celebration, but it’s pretty and festive and sets you in a good mood.  You even smile at James and tell him _happy Christmas_ when you find him there, adjusting a Christmas bauble on the tree.

“Happy Christmas, Teddy,” he says with his own smile. It’s a smile absent of any pretense or underlying connotations.  Your heart does a little flutter for whatever stupid reason when he calls you by your first name, rather than _Professor Lupin_.

“Place looks great,” you say, gesturing widely, making polite conversation.

“Yeah, cheers; I worked all afternoon on it,” he says, without any hint of sarcasm.

You look at him sideways, waiting for him to break and confess that he’s a lying sack of shit.  But he doesn’t.  And you question him. “You?  Did _this_?”  You gesture again, taking the entirety of the Christmas decorations in with your arms.

He narrows his eyes at you.  “Who else do you think was going to do it? Fucking Oglvie is like anti-joy or something.  I spent all morning searching the storage rooms for the decorations.  Pays to be Head Boy with so much access to the castle,” he grins smugly.

You’re impressed.  You’re pleasantly surprised.  But you’re still slightly doubtful.  He could still turn around and make you look like an arse for believing him. “And this big effing pine tree in the middle of the hall?”

“Oh, you should’ve seen it when I found it outside. Little oak sapling. Bloody adorable. Only this high.” He makes a twelve-inch space between his hands.

You’re still astounded and _still_ suspicious.  “And…?”

“And what?”  He flashes you that trademark _duh_ face. “I transfigured it.”

Damn, if your knees aren’t about to buckle beneath you like that swooning schoolgirl he had once reduced you to with his superhuman athletic agility in your gran’s kitchen.  So he _had_ been paying attention in lessons, between devising ways to be a smart-arse and asking too many questions.

You take in the scene again and blink rapidly, quite dumb-founded.  “Jamie, you…”

He finishes your sentence for you, quick as usual to pat himself on the back, “…are a brilliant and wonderful person? I know.”

“It’s beautiful, Jamie,” you say, and your smile is stupid wide.

“Happy Christmas, you blue-haired freak,” he says as he opens his arms to you in the way _bros_ hug it out.  He hasn’t called you that since he was maybe twelve and you feel like you’re both kids again. It’s such a welcome feeling, after you’d spent the last few months scrambling and straining to be an adult.

But when you enter his embrace, you are anything but _bros_ and you are definitely not children.  His arms are tight and warm around you, full of longing and need and emotion you hadn’t known James was capable of.  You linger there, resting your head on his shoulder as if you’re not his teacher and he isn’t much younger than you.  You breathe in his scent and you find yourself yearning for him too.

You’re about to pull away before you’re ready, when Albus comes crashing rambunctiously around you, followed by Scorpius. It’s a bloody family group hug now. The two younger boys are giggling and hyperactive, fueled by holiday cheer and no doubt lots of sweets. You’re all shouting _aaarrrh_ like you’re pirates or bears in a decidedly masculine show of affection.

When they all fall away from you, James’ eyes linger on yours and enrapture you with the mystery hiding within them. “I’ve got a present for you,” he says quietly.  You’re not certain, but the way he bites his lip might be considered coy and totally unlike him.

“As if all this isn’t enough of a gift,” you readily admit.

“Meet me at Gryffindor tower after dinner, and I’ll give it to you,” he says.  Ah, there it is. That hint of something else. The scheme.  The plot thickens.

You give a small, sad sigh.  “James…”

“Oh so now it’s _James_?” he quirks his brow at you again, “A minute ago I was _Jamie_ and you were _Teddy._ ”

You’re stunned.  James is so damn perceptive.  His words make your heart break a little because you don’t know if you can ever really be Teddy and Jamie again.  You’re all grown up – Professor T.R. Lupin.  And he’s just James, or Potter when he’s grating on your nerves in class. You can never go back to being a child with him.  And you wonder if that struggle to hang on to the wisps of your youth had drawn you to James in the first place. He’s your Peter Pan.

You relent.  James has always gotten his way with you.  Well, almost always.  “Fine. I’ll come by later.”

You take your time walking to Gryffindor tower, repeating the mantra in your head, _No touching, no kissing, no anything._   The Fat Lady greets you in her frame, and you notice she’s a bit sweet on you. She less-than-subtly checks out your arse as you walk through the portrait hole.  Gods, is _everybody_ hot for teacher?

James is sitting on the sofa in the common room, which is also decked out for the season.  The same glass Christmas baubles adorn the mantle of the fireplace and you know he’s decorated here too.  You are still ridiculously impressed.  You sit at a safe distance away from him and hold out your hand expectantly, hoping that he puts something in it that isn’t his dick.

“Alright, so let’s have it,” you say, smiling.

He moves to sit next to you.  You’re shoulder-to-shoulder like you always were on the Potters’ couch.  You can’t move away without being conspicuous.  So you stay, trapped like you were against gran’s kitchen counter, and try to keep a level head.

You inwardly heave a sigh of relief when he sets a box in your hand, about the size of a muggle credit card and about four inches deep.  You unwrap it excitedly and lift the lid.  You peer into the box, and staring up at you are two pairs of eyes. 

One set is nearly purple, a few shades darker than your own lavender ones.  The other set are blue and have a much older look about them, like they’ve seen more than one war.  You knew there was a formidable age difference between your mother and your father.  But you hadn’t really studied their photos to get a sense of that difference.  There weren’t many pictures of them together anyway.  You had wondered if they had hidden their relationship in the early days, long before you were born, which would have explained the lack of photos of them as a couple.  In this photo, you definitely see their age difference.  Your mother, with her brilliant magenta hair sticking out at all angles like a punk rock pixie, and your father, dressed in corduroy and looking like the quintessential British professor, are smiling back at you.

It’s not like you haven’t seen photos of your parents before.  But you haven’t seen this one.  And it tears up your insides. Your chest tightens and you heave a shuddering exhale.  You haven’t cried in front of James since you were a little boy, when he was too young to understand the depth of your pain but hugged you anyway.  You’re crying now.  Silently. Clutching the framed photograph to your heart the way you wish you could hold your parents.

When you think the urge to audibly sob passes, you hazard to speak.  “Thank you, Jamie,” you whisper. 

He puts his arms around you.  He doesn’t say anything.  He doesn’t need to. 

James had always been there.  He was there when you were six and you tickled his little baby feet, wishing you had a brother.  He became that brother for you.  And you are just now beginning to comprehend that the affection he felt towards you had always been unconditional.

He’s holding your face and kissing the tears from your cheeks, and you don’t stop him because right now you _are_ Teddy and Jamie.  You _are_ those little brats who would do anything for each other, as you always will be, regardless of any titles attached to your name or any that may become attached to his.

Everything begins to click into place as his lips move softly over your jaw.  And when your lips meet, more softly than you ever knew they could, you finally understand. James hadn’t been trying to be a pain in your arse.  He had been trying to show you how much he cares about you.  He carried your parchment piles around for you because he recognized that you were tired. He organized your storage room for you because you were too frazzled.  He asked you loads of questions in class because he knew that it would make you look like a good teacher.  He stayed at Hogwarts and decorated the Great Hall for Christmas because he knew you’d be homesick.  He did everything in his power to make these first few months of adulthood easier for you.

Because he loves you.  James Sirius Potter loves you.

All that other stuff with the nakedness and the sex – that was because James is just James, a horny teenage boy, and you’re not very different.  But everything else, everything you overlooked because you didn’t want to get your dick too wet, was all borne out of love.  You feel it in his kiss now and you’re cursing yourself for not recognizing it sooner. You’re drunk on his love and you just want more.

But loving you doesn’t change the fact that James is a Hogwarts student and you are a Hogwarts professor and you are kissing in Hogwarts two days shy of his seventeenth birthday. You see why your parents might have wanted to hide their relationship at the beginning.  Granted, they were both older at the time, but you imagine there was a similar dynamic of forbidden love.

So, as much as you want to sit here all night and kiss for hours just like this, without sex looming like a beast over you, with nothing but love and the lightness of your hearts keeping you both buoyant, you have to stop.  You don’t tell James _no_.  That always just makes him obnoxiously reactive. You deflect attention from the kissing by asking him a question.

“Where’d you get this picture?”

“I found it when I was digging through storage. It was stuck to a dried-up wreath. Part of a memorial or something, I guess.”

You know your parents died here, somewhere in the battlefield that spanned every corner of the Hogwarts property. You had always hoped that their ghosts were here.  When you were a student, you thought that maybe you’d encounter them one day. You wonder if they’d smile at you proudly if you saw the ghosts of your parents today. Perhaps they’d be your guardian angels, giving you strength as you power through what you know will be the hardest years of your life. 

You hadn’t thought about them much, surprisingly, until James had given you that picture.  It’s the best gift he could ever bestow upon you – the gift of comfort and love and security.  You are certain of this.

 

Until the twenty-sixth of December, when he gives you an even greater gift on his own seventeenth birthday.

He’s in the staff quarters with you in your apartment after an evening of cake and songs courtesy of Albus and Scorpius. You’re there so that he can fire-call his parents. At least, that’s what he tells you. After a long conversation with Harry, Ginny, and Lily, in which James can barely get a word in, he pounces on your back.

It’s a playful invitation to wrestle the way you do back home.  You both giggle and struggle for dominance until you’re the one bested.  He pins you to your bed, with his hands as much as with his stare, which darkens considerably.  It makes your heart race.  He’s gazing down at you like he wants you.  The corners of his lips curl up slightly with the knowledge that he could probably have you if he really tried hard enough.

“Back to the dorms for you, birthday boy,” you say in a baritone, intimate, quiet voice that conveys the opposite of what you’re instructing him to do.

“No,” he says petulantly.

You quirk your brow at him.  “No?”  This is all so _de ja vu_.

He shakes his head slowly and he isn’t smirking anymore.  “No, Teddy,” he speaks softly, “It’s my birthday.  And I still haven’t gotten what I really want.”

If you ask him, it will just open the door to places you shouldn’t be going in this hallowed castle.  But you do it anyway.  You may be a professor now, but you’re still only twenty-three and bloody reckless. “What do you want, Jamie?”

He looks at you in a manner you have only glimpsed briefly once before, like you are all he has ever wanted. There’s pain in his eyes and it pulls on your heart hard enough to make it ache.  And you realize that he’s been agonizing over you for years longer than you’ve been agonizing over him.  He leans down to kiss you.  It’s soft again. You wonder where this tender side of James had been hiding all this time.  He doesn’t have to answer your question.  You can feel what he wants.  You can sense that he wants it so badly that it hurts.

His lips ghost over yours as a ragged, breathy whisper pours warmly from his.  “Please…”

You have never heard that word come out of his mouth this way, with so much desperation and angsty longing. You’d only heard James use this word when he was being manipulative or sarcastic.  But now, he means it.  He is pleading with you to give him what he’s wanted for so long.  It seems like you could destroy him by denying him this, and perhaps, you’ve been unwittingly destroying him all these months by doing just that.

The world dissolves around you and James. There isn’t a school here with strict rules and regulations.  There is only Teddy and Jamie, the way it should be, giving one another everything until you both break.  When you make love, you’re no longer surprised to find out that it is his first time. You understand that he’d been saving himself for this moment, holding out hope that it would be to you that he bestow the gift of his body.

And it is a gift, indeed.  James is all strong, nubile limbs and miles of rippling muscles, and soft, freckled skin, and _all yours_. He is your Jamie, your boy lover, your brother, your best friend, your downfall, your headache, your everything. All his soft parts call to you, beckoning you to caress and to kiss.  And all his hard parts scream to be taken, to be licked, to be sucked.

You finally taste that cock you’d been dreaming of and it’s everything you hoped it would be, and more than you can fit down your throat – and that’s saying something, considering how well versed you are at oral sex.  When he takes yours into his mouth, it is clear that he’s new at this.  He takes you inexpertly, giggling every other minute to cover his inelegance. But you still come anyway because, please, this is James we’re talking about.  You spasm between his lips, with your hands tangled in his dark locks, and he surprises you by swallowing.  The idea of James Potter sucking a dick and drinking come is so outlandish that it’s hot. It’s so hot that you pull him up by his hair, eliciting a sexy little groan of protest, and you make him kiss you hard with all of your spunk flavoring his mouth.

He holds you in his arms while you both recover from round one.  You lazily talk about the events that brought you here.  You find out that James didn’t think he’d get as far with you as he did that night after your graduation party.  He had expected you to push him away after one kiss and couldn’t believe he got you naked. You laugh fondly about this as you absently stroke his naked torso – his model-perfect abs, his hard but narrow chest. He’s not a huge hulking jock. He’s very feline in the graceful lines of his athletic form.  His ego, however, makes up for what he lacks in bulk.

You spend all night doing this – building upon each step carefully, mounting each one with fervor and relish, resting on the precipice to talk or to just hold one another, then climbing up to the next step. James is a bit resistant to doing it this way – he wouldn’t be a Gryffindor if he didn’t want you to just fold back his legs and fuck him rotten.  But you keep promising him that it is better this way every time you have to put your hands firmly on him and tell him to slow the fuck down. You show him that the longer path is the one that feels the best.  You know he’ll remember it better this way.  By the time you reach the upper most step, it’s well after midnight and you each have come at least twice.

Your thorough, cautious progression is rewarded. He’s more than ready for you. You’re both so wet with sweat and lube and spit that your bodies slide easily against each other. He is open and pliant and desperate at this point, as are you.  You’ve had your mouth inside him, your tongue inside him, your fingers inside him. And now you want your cock inside him. You know it isn’t wrong, even though the rules say otherwise.  You’re not fucking your student.  You’re not shagging your brother.  You are making love to Jamie.  _Your Jamie,_ he reminds you with his adoring eyes, as you sink into him like a knife through butter, with no resistance.

His flexible body is folded neatly in half, with his ankles resting on your shoulders.  He’s reduced from a hotheaded Gryffindor brat to a mewling kitten in just a few slow, shallow thrusts.  His eyes roll back and his jaw drops open in ecstasy.  And he is _beautiful_. He is ageless. He is timeless.

Of course, James is a bossy bottom. You couldn’t expect otherwise. He’s loud and obnoxious and tries to tell you how it’s done even while you’re completely undoing him. And you love everything he hurls at you. The faster and harder you go, the more colorful his insults.  Until finally…

“Oh _gods,_ Teddy, you goddamn bloody pervert, don’t you dare stop… Oh, _yeah_ , just like that, you dirty cockslut… fuck me… budge over to the right… no left… harder… harder, you filthy blue-haired freak… Oh… OH… OH MY GODS, TEDDY…”

There’s no doubt that you’ve been nudging his prostate when he comes hard through his fist and decorates both his abdomen and yours. You’re surprised he’s still got spunk left in him after your earlier forays. 

When he catches his breath and stills, he’s staring up at you all heavy-lidded and sedated by orgasm.  His smirk is lazy and smug.  You drape yourself over him and kiss that smirk off his face because you’re not done with him.  He’s still smiling and humming his approval softly as you thrust into him with slow, thorough strokes.

He sounds drunk on endorphins when he groans, quite amused, “Damn, Teddy.  Your hair. I’ve never seen it turn purple like that.”

You know it has only ever turned purple for one other person before, and you know exactly why it is purple now.

You are close to orgasm, and James knows it. “Look at me when you come,” he commands. Just those words alone make you want to spill into him.  You don’t close your eyes, even for a second, as you grunt and deliver your final thrust before you lose yourself in James Potter completely and cease to be a separate person. You want to shout out the words that you feel as you come inside him.  But you somehow refrain.

You want to make these words count. You want to make sure you really mean them.

After all, it is what James has wanted ever since he was twelve, as you’ve just learned tonight.

You hold his face in your hands after you catch your breath, after the emotion reaches a climax and begins to settle back into place, after you’re sure it’s not just the fantastic sex talking.

His eyes are an opening into the universe that is his soul, and his gaze is a key to open up _your_ soul.  And you know these words to be true, as true as the purple of your hair.

“I love you, Jamie.”

His smile lights up the room. And you know this is exactly what James wanted for his birthday.  Not just the sex.  He wanted _you_.  And, damn it, you will never be able to say _no_ to him ever again.

 

The consequences of your actions that night are not as grave as you had though they would be.  James has always been good at keeping secrets.  You are both decent actors when you need to be and as sneaky as Slytherins.  Even Albus doesn’t suspect anything is going on between you and his brother. You don’t feel that guilt that you thought you should feel.  And that’s because you love James.  And James loves you.

The next term is a whirlwind of lessons and papers and exams, all swirling around the one thing keeping you grounded and keeping you from wanting to quit your job.  James.  James is always there, to be your much appreciated teacher’s assistant, to be your best friend when you doubt your abilities, to help you relax with a well-plied back rub, to be your lover when you just need to close out the rest of the world and be in love with him.

He sneaks into your apartment a few nights a week and you fuck, no, you _make love,_ like it’s Valentines Day – slow and sensual like the first time. He falls asleep with his arms around you, or yours around him.  You conscientiously wake him up before dawn to sneak back over to Gryffindor Tower before the staff awakes.

But sometimes you really do just want to fuck because, shit, this is James Sirius Potter and you are Teddy Lupin. You risk your career to bend James over your desk in your office to fuck him.  It is so worth the danger of getting caught just to hear him say those words while you drive your cock into him, hard and fast – _Fuck me, Professor Lupin, just like that._ You preside over detention with him and wait anxiously for the students to leave, throwing knowing glances at one another from behind the teacher’s desk, until the room is all yours and under the desk becomes the perfect place for him to get on his knees for you. He’s wont to give out lots of detentions and inadvertently gets lots of practice sucking cock.

It is all so much fun and you are stupid-in-love.

You sneak away to Hogsmeade for dates that look on the surface like brothers sharing a drink or a meal. You find time to explore the edges of the forest together just to be alone with one another. He sits next to you at the staff table at every meal, and all the girls jealously bemoan his presence as your teacher’s pet while you clandestinely hold hands under the table. Or is it you, they’re jealous of?

End of term comes too quickly, like you did that time James performed that thing with his tongue behind greenhouse four. Before you’re ready to let him go, James is packing up his trunk and leaving Hogwarts for the last time as a student. You can only bear it and can only keep from falling apart because you know one thing to be true.

James Sirius Potter will always be there.

Even when he leaves you at Hogwarts to try his hand at professional Quidditch. Because James, no matter where he is, or who he is with, he will always be in your heart.  You will always love him.  And you know that he will always love you.


End file.
